Party misleaders, voting system, disinformation, undemocratic political finance laws and weak platforms all make voter turnout relatively low

Party leaders should agree to 8 key, written rules to have a fair minority government

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Thursday, May 1, 2025

OTTAWA – Today, Democracy Watch called for democratic changes to the federal political system to make elections more fair, and to increase voter turnout.  Initial results show that the Mark Carney Liberals won 49% (169 out of 343) of the seats in the House of Commons with the support of only 30% of eligible voters (and 44% of the votes cast), which raises serious questions about their mandate to govern, let alone implement any specific law or policy.

Democracy Watch also called on party leaders to agree to 8 key, written rules to have a fair minority government (finally after six minority governments in the past 20 years), and to enact the rules as soon as Parliament opens.  Politicians in Britain, Australia and New Zealand enacted the rules years ago, and about 80% of voters and constitutional scholars support enacting the rules.

Even though all party leaders said it was the most important election of our lifetime, only about 69% of eligible voters cast a ballot, which is only marginally better than the 1993, 1997, 2015 and 2019 turnouts and significantly below the turnout levels of 75% or more in many elections in the 1970s and 1980s.

The NDP won 6.3% of the popular vote but ended up with only 2% (7) of the seats in the House (under a fairer voting system, they would have won 22 seats), and the Green Party won 1.2% of the vote but only 0.3% (1) of the seats (under a fairer system, they would have won 4 seats).  The percentages of votes and seats won were roughly the same for the Conservatives and Bloc Quebecois.

“With one in three voters staying home, only 30 percent of eligible voters supporting the winning party, and three parties not electing the number of MPs they deserved to elect, alarm bells should be going off and questions raised about the legitimacy of the federal government,” said Duff Conacher, Co-founder of Democracy Watch.  “Voter turnout will go up significantly only if honesty is required in politics, the voting system is changed to a proportional system with the right to vote none-of-the-above, and political ethics and government accountability laws are strengthened.”

Federal parties must ensure make the following changes if they want to increase voter turnout to the past level of about 75% in many elections in the 1970s and 1980s, or even higher:

1. Pass an honesty-in-politics law that gives voters an easy, low-cost way to file complaints to the Ethics Commissioner, and requires the Commissioner to penalize misleaders (and requires MPs who switch parties in-between elections to resign and run in a by-election), and also enact effective measures to stop false claims during elections, especially online to prevent the spread of disinformation.

2. Add the right to vote “none of the above” and to give a reason on election and by-election ballots.

3. Actually fix election dates (with only a vote of non-confidence against the government causing an early election) and move the fixed election date to the last Monday in October to make it easier for people with kids, and students, to follow and participate in the election campaign and have the identification needed to vote.

4. Change the voting system to provide a more accurate representation of the popular vote results in each election in the seats held by each party in the legislature (as in many other countries) while ensuring that all elected officials are supported by, and are accountable to, voters in each riding/constituency (with a safeguard to ensure that a party with a low-level, narrow-base of support does not have a disproportionately high level of power in the legislature).

5. Strengthen federal political ethics, political finance, lobbying, open government, and whistleblower protection laws (the Green Party received the best grade of B in overall bad grades in DWatch’s Report Card on the parties’ election platforms).

6. Strengthen the requirements for reporting survey results to prevent reports from misleading voters into thinking the results in their riding, or overall, are pre-determined by requiring anyone reporting or posting results (or seat projections), in the media, social media, podcasts or on the Internet etc. at any time in any way to describe the survey methodology, the margin of error (and, if there is no margin of error, why flaws in the survey methodology mean it has no margin of error and should be disregarded).

7. Mandate Elections Canada to spend the $5 million or so it spends each election on voter education advertising on ads that include the following two key messages in their voter education advertising and communications – the real reasons to vote – which its partner organization Democracy Education Network includes in its VoteParty.ca and VotePromise.ca voter turnout initiatives:

i. “You never know when your vote may count” — with examples from past elections, and from specific ridings in various elections, which show clearly that election results cannot be predicted in advance, and;

ii. “If you don’t vote, you don’t count” — making it clear that politicians don’t really care about you if you don’t vote because non-voters do not help them get elected or defeated.

These changes will make it easy and give voters many more compelling reasons to vote as they will know that voting for a specific party will mean their vote will count and the party’s promises will be kept, and they will be more assured of democratic, accountable good government overall no matter which party wins.

“More and more voters know from their experience of the past few decades of elections that they are not going to get what they vote for, and are likely to get dishonest, secretive, unethical, unrepresentative and wasteful government no matter which party they vote for, and as a result no one should be surprised to see voter turnout continue be lower than in the past,” said Conacher.

These problems exist in all the provinces and territories across Canada.  All of these changes should be made by the federal and provincial and territorial governments, and for their municipalities, before mandatory voting is even considered because forcing voters to vote creates false legitimacy for political parties and politicians (and mandatory voting must never be implemented unless “none of the above” is one of the options on the ballot). Internet voting should also not even be considered currently given it would dangerously undermine the integrity of the voting system.

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FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:
Duff Conacher, Co-founder of Democracy Watch
Tel: (613) 241-5179
Cell: 416-546-3443
Email: [email protected]

Democracy Watch’s Democratic Voting System Campaign